[Reader-list] Chomsky @ MIT Tech & Culture Forum
Raghavendra Bhat
ragu at asianetonline.net
Mon Nov 5 18:45:56 IST 2001
The New War Against Terror
Noam Chomsky
The Technology And Culture Forum At MIT
http://web.mit.edu/tac/www/
Everyone knows it's the TV people who run the world [crowd laugher]. I
just got orders that I'm supposed to be here, not there. Well the last
talk I gave at this forum was on a light pleasant topic. It was about
how humans are an endangered species and given the nature of their
institutions they are likely to destroy themselves in a fairly short
time. So this time there is a little relief and we have a pleasant topic
instead, the new war on terror. Unfortunately, the world keeps coming up
with things that make it more and more horrible as we proceed.
I'm going to assume 2 conditions for this talk.
The first one is just what I assume to be recognition of fact. That is
that the events of September 11 were a horrendous atrocity probably the
most devastating instant human toll of any crime in history, outside of
war. The second assumption has to do with the goals. I'm assuming that
our goal is that we are interested in reducing the likelihood of such
crimes whether they are against us or against someone else. If you don't
accept those two assumptions, then what I say will not be addressed to
you. If we do accept them, then a number of questions arise, closely
related ones, which merit a good deal of thought.
One question, and by far the most important one is what is happening
right now? Implicit in that is what can we do about it? The 2nd has to
do with the very common assumption that what happened on September 11 is
a historic event, one which will change history. I tend to agree with
that. I think it's true. It was a historic event and the question we
should be asking is exactly why? The 3rd question has to do with the
title, The War Against Terrorism. Exactly what is it? And there is a
related question, namely what is terrorism? The 4th question which is
narrower but important has to do with the origins of the crimes of
September 11th. And the 5th question that I want to talk a little about
is what policy options there are in fighting this war against terrorism
and dealing with the situations that led to it.
I'll say a few things about each. Glad to go beyond in discussion and
don't hesitate to bring up other questions. These are ones that come to
my mind as prominent but you may easily and plausibly have other
choices.
Well let's start with right now. I'll talk about the situation in
Afghanistan. I'll just keep to uncontroversial sources like the New York
Times [crowd laughter]. According to the New York Times there are 7 to 8
million people in Afghanistan on the verge of starvation. That was true
actually before September 11th. They were surviving on international
aid. On September 16th, the Times reported, I'm quoting it, that the
United States demanded from Pakistan the elimination of truck convoys
that provide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan's
civilian population. As far as I could determine there was no reaction
in the United States or for that matter in Europe. I was on national
radio all over Europe the next day. There was no reaction in the United
States or in Europe to my knowledge to the demand to impose massive
starvation on millions of people. The threat of military strikes right
after September.....around that time forced the removal of international
aid workers that crippled the assistance programs. Actually, I am
quoting again from the New York Times. Refugees reaching Pakistan after
arduous journeys from AF are describing scenes of desperation and fear
at home as the threat of American led military attacks turns their long
running misery into a potential catastrophe. The country was on a
lifeline and we just cut the line. Quoting an evacuated aid worker, in
the New York Times Magazine.
The World Food Program, the UN program, which is the main one by far,
were able to resume after 3 weeks in early October, they began to resume
at a lower level, resume food shipments. They don't have international
aid workers within, so the distribution system is hampered. That was
suspended as soon as the bombing began. They then resumed but at a lower
pace while aid agencies leveled scathing condemnations of US airdrops,
condemning them as propaganda tools which are probably doing more harm
than good. That happens to be quoting the London Financial Times but it
is easy to continue. After the first week of bombing, the New York
Times reported on a back page inside a column on something else, that by
the arithmetic of the United Nations there will soon be 7.5 million
Afghans in acute need of even a loaf of bread and there are only a few
weeks left before the harsh winter will make deliveries to many areas
totally impossible, continuing to quote, but with bombs falling the
delivery rate is down to * of what is needed. Casual comment. Which
tells us that Western civilization is anticipating the slaughter of,
well do the arithmetic, 3-4 million people or something like that. On
the same day, the leader of Western civilization dismissed with
contempt, once again, offers of negotiation for delivery of the alleged
target, Osama bin Laden, and a request for some evidence to substantiate
the demand for total capitulation. It was dismissed. On the same day the
Special Rapporteur of the UN in charge of food pleaded with the United
States to stop the bombing to try to save millions of victims. As far as
I'm aware that was unreported. That was Monday. Yesterday the major aid
agencies OXFAM and Christian Aid and others joined in that plea. You
can't find a report in the New York Times. There was a line in the
Boston Globe, hidden in a story about another topic, Kashmir.
Well we could easily go on....but all of that....first of all indicates
to us what's happening. Looks like what's happening is some sort of
silent genocide. It also gives a good deal of insight into the elite
culture, the culture that we are part of. It indicates that whatever,
what will happen we don't know, but plans are being made and programs
implemented on the assumption that they may lead to the death of several
million people in the next couple of weeks....very casually with no
comment, no particular thought about it, that's just kind of normal,
here and in a good part of Europe. Not in the rest of the world. In fact
not even in much of Europe. So if you read the Irish press or the press
in Scotland...that close, reactions are very different. Well that's
what's happening now. What's happening now is very much under our
control. We can do a lot to affect what's happening. And that's roughly
it.
Alright let's turn to the slightly more abstract question, forgetting
for the moment that we are in the midst of apparently trying to murder 3
or 4 million people, not Taliban of course, their victims. Let's go
back...turn to the question of the historic event that took place on
September 11th. As I said, I think that's correct. It was a historic
event. Not unfortunately because of its scale, unpleasant to think
about, but in terms of the scale it's not that unusual. I did say it's
the worst...probably the worst instant human toll of any crime. And that
may be true. But there are terrorist crimes with effects a bit more
drawn out that are more extreme, unfortunately. Nevertheless, it's a
historic event because there was a change. The change was the direction
in which the guns were pointed. That's new. Radically new. So, take US
history.
The last time that the national territory of the United States was under
attack, or for that matter, even threatened was when the British burned
down Washington in 1814. There have been many...it was common to bring
up Pearl Harbor but that's not a good analogy. The Japanese, what ever
you think about it, the Japanese bombed military bases in 2 US colonies
not the national territory; colonies which had been taken from their
inhabitants in not a very pretty way. This is the national territory
that's been attacked on a large scale, you can find a few fringe
examples but this is unique.
During these close to 200 years, we, the United States expelled or
mostly exterminated the indigenous population, that's many millions of
people, conquered half of Mexico, carried out depredations all over the
region, Caribbean and Central America, sometimes beyond, conquered
Hawaii and the Philippines, killing several 100,000 Filipinos in the
process. Since the Second World War, it has extended its reach around
the world in ways I don't have to describe. But it was always killing
someone else, the fighting was somewhere else, it was others who were
getting slaughtered. Not here. Not the national territory.
In the case of Europe, the change is even more dramatic because its
history is even more horrendous than ours. We are an offshoot of Europe,
basically. For hundreds of years, Europe has been casually slaughtering
people all over the world. That's how they conquered the world, not by
handing out candy to babies. During this period, Europe did suffer
murderous wars, but that was European killers murdering one another. The
main sport of Europe for hundreds of years was slaughtering one
another. The only reason that it came to an end in 1945, was....it had
nothing to do with Democracy or not making war with each other and other
fashionable notions. It had to do with the fact that everyone understood
that the next time they play the game it was going to be the end for the
world. Because the Europeans, including us, had developed such massive
weapons of destruction that that game just have to be over. And it goes
back hundreds of years. In the 17th century, about probably 40% of the
entire population of Germany was wiped out in one war.
But during this whole bloody murderous period, it was Europeans
slaughtering each other, and Europeans slaughtering people
elsewhere. The Congo didn't attack Belgium, India didn't attack England,
Algeria didn't attack France. It's uniform. There are again small
exceptions, but pretty small in scale, certainly invisible in the scale
of what Europe and us were doing to the rest of the world. This is the
first change. The first time that the guns have been pointed the other
way. And in my opinion that's probably why you see such different
reactions on the two sides of the Irish Sea which I have noticed,
incidentally, in many interviews on both sides, national radio on both
sides. The world looks very different depending on whether you are
holding the lash or whether you are being whipped by it for hundreds of
years, very different. So I think the shock and surprise in Europe and
its offshoots, like here, is very understandable. It is a historic event
but regrettably not in scale, in something else and a reason why the
rest of the world...most of the rest of the world looks at it quite
differently. Not lacking sympathy for the victims of the atrocity or
being horrified by them, that's almost uniform, but viewing it from a
different perspective. Something we might want to understand.
Well, let's go to the third question, 'What is the war against
terrorism?' and a side question, 'What's terrorism?'. The war against
terrorism has been described in high places as a struggle against a
plague, a cancer which is spread by barbarians, by "depraved opponents
of civilization itself." That's a feeling that I share. The words I'm
quoting, however, happen to be from 20 years ago. Those are...that's
President Reagan and his Secretary of State. The Reagan administration
came into office 20 years ago declaring that the war against
international terrorism would be the core of our foreign
policy....describing it in terms of the kind I just mentioned and
others. And it was the core of our foreign policy. The Reagan
administration responded to this plague spread by depraved opponents of
civilization itself by creating an extraordinary international terrorist
network, totally unprecedented in scale, which carried out massive
atrocities all over the world, primarily....well, partly nearby, but not
only there. I won't run through the record, you're all educated people,
so I'm sure you learned about it in High School. [crowd laughter]
But I'll just mention one case which is totally uncontroversial, so we
might as well not argue about it, by no means the most extreme but
uncontroversial. It's uncontroversial because of the judgments of the
highest international authorities the International Court of Justice,
the World Court, and the UN Security Council. So this one is
uncontroversial, at least among people who have some minimal concern for
international law, human rights, justice and other things like that. And
now I'll leave you an exercise. You can estimate the size of that
category by simply asking how often this uncontroversial case has been
mentioned in the commentary of the last month. And it's a particularly
relevant one, not only because it is uncontroversial, but because it
does offer a precedent as to how a law abiding state would respond
to...did respond in fact to international terrorism, which is
uncontroversial. And was even more extreme than the events of September
11th. I'm talking about the Reagan-US war against Nicaragua which left
tens of thousands of people dead, the country ruined, perhaps beyond
recovery.
Nicaragua did respond. They didn't respond by setting off bombs in
Washington. They responded by taking it to the World Court, presenting a
case, they had no problem putting together evidence. The World Court
accepted their case, ruled in their favor, ordered the...condemned what
they called the "unlawful use of force," which is another word for
international terrorism, by the United States, ordered the United States
to terminate the crime and to pay massive reparations. The United
States, of course, dismissed the court judgment with total contempt and
announced that it would not accept the jurisdiction of the court
henceforth. Then Nicaragua then went to the UN Security Council which
considered a resolution calling on all states to observe international
law. No one was mentioned but everyone understood. The United States
vetoed the resolution. It now stands as the only state on record which
has both been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism
and has vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on states to
observe international law. Nicaragua then went to the General Assembly
where there is technically no veto but a negative US vote amounts to a
veto. It passed a similar resolution with only the United States,
Israel, and El Salvador opposed. The following year again, this time the
United States could only rally Israel to the cause, so 2 votes opposed
to observing international law. At that point, Nicaragua couldn't do
anything lawful. It tried all the measures. They don't work in a world
that is ruled by force.
This case is uncontroversial but it's by no means the most extreme. We
gain a lot of insight into our own culture and society and what's
happening now by asking 'how much we know about all this? How much we
talk about it? How much you learn about it in school? How much it's all
over the front pages?' And this is only the beginning. The United
States responded to the World Court and the Security Council by
immediately escalating the war very quickly, that was a bipartisan
decision incidentally. The terms of the war were also changed. For the
first time there were official orders given...official orders to the
terrorist army to attack what are called "soft targets," meaning
undefended civilian targets, and to keep away from the Nicaraguan
army. They were able to do that because the United States had total
control of the air over Nicaragua and the mercenary army was supplied
with advanced communication equipment, it wasn't a guerilla army in the
normal sense and could get instructions about the disposition of the
Nicaraguan army forces so they could attack agricultural collectives,
health clinics, and so on...soft targets with impunity. Those were the
official orders.
What was the reaction? It was known. There was a reaction to it. The
policy was regarded as sensible by left liberal opinion. So Michael
Kinsley who represents the left in mainstream discussion, wrote an
article in which he said that we shouldn't be too quick to criticize
this policy as Human Rights Watch had just done. He said a "sensible
policy" must "meet the test of cost benefit analysis" -- that is, I'm
quoting now, that is the analysis of "the amount of blood and misery
that will be poured in, and the likelihood that democracy will emerge at
the other end." Democracy as the US understands the term, which is
graphically illustrated in the surrounding countries. Notice that it is
axiomatic that the United States, US elites, have the right to conduct
the analysis and to pursue the project if it passes their tests. And it
did pass their tests. It worked. When Nicaragua finally succumbed to
superpower assault, commentators openly and cheerfully lauded the
success of the methods that were adopted and described them
accurately. So I'll quote Time Magazine just to pick one. They lauded
the success of the methods adopted: "to wreck the economy and prosecute
a long and deadly proxy war until the exhausted natives overthrow the
unwanted government themselves," with a cost to us that is "minimal,"
and leaving the victims "with wrecked bridges, sabotaged power stations,
and ruined farms," and thus providing the US candidate with a "winning
issue": "ending the impoverishment of the people of Nicaragua." The New
York Times had a headline saying "Americans United in Joy" at this
outcome.
That is the culture in which we live and it reveals several facts. One
is the fact that terrorism works. It doesn't fail. It works. Violence
usually works. That's world history. Secondly, it's a very serious
analytic error to say, as is commonly done, that terrorism is the weapon
of the weak. Like other means of violence, it's primarily a weapon of
the strong, overwhelmingly, in fact. It is held to be a weapon of the
weak because the strong also control the doctrinal systems and their
terror doesn't count as terror. Now that's close to universal. I can't
think of a historical exception, even the worst mass murderers view the
world that way. So pick the Nazis. They weren't carrying out terror in
occupied Europe. They were protecting the local population from the
terrorisms of the partisans. And like other resistance movements, there
was terrorism. The Nazis were carrying out counter terror. Furthermore,
the United States essentially agreed with that. After the war, the US
army did extensive studies of Nazi counter terror operations in
Europe. First I should say that the US picked them up and began carrying
them out itself, often against the same targets, the former
resistance. But the military also studied the Nazi methods published
interesting studies, sometimes critical of them because they were
inefficiently carried out, so a critical analysis, you didn't do this
right, you did that right, but those methods with the advice of Wermacht
officers who were brought over here became the manuals of counter
insurgency, of counter terror, of low intensity conflict, as it is
called, and are the manuals, and are the procedures that are being
used. So it's not just that the Nazis did it. It's that it was regarded
as the right thing to do by the leaders of western civilization, that is
us, who then proceeded to do it themselves. Terrorism is not the weapon
of the weak. It is the weapon of those who are against 'us' whoever 'us'
happens to be. And if you can find a historical exception to that, I'd
be interested in seeing it.
Well, an interesting indication of the nature of our culture, our high
culture, is the way in which all of this is regarded. One way it's
regarded is just suppressing it. So almost nobody has ever heard of
it. And the power of American propaganda and doctrine is so strong that
even among the victims it's barely known. I mean, when you talk about
this to people in Argentina, you have to remind them. Oh, yeah, that
happened, we forgot about it. It's deeply suppressed. The sheer
consequences of the monopoly of violence can be very powerful in
ideological and other terms.
Well, one illuminating aspect of our own attitude toward terrorism is
the reaction to the idea that Nicaragua might have the right to defend
itself. Actually I went through this in some detail with database
searches and that sort of thing. The idea that Nicaragua might have the
right to defend itself was considered outrageous. There is virtually
nothing in mainstream commentary indicating that Nicaragua might have
that right. And that fact was exploited by the Reagan administration and
its propaganda in an interesting way. Those of you who were around in
that time will remember that they periodically floated rumors that the
Nicaraguans were getting MIG jets, jets from Russia. At that point the
hawks and the doves split. The hawks said, 'ok, let's bomb 'em.' The
doves said, `wait a minute, let's see if the rumors are true. And if the
rumors are true, then let's bomb them. Because they are a threat to the
United States.' Why, incidentally were they getting MIGs. Well they
tried to get jet planes from European countries but the United States
put pressure on its allies so that it wouldn't send them means of
defense because they wanted them to turn to the Russians. That's good
for propaganda purposes. Then they become a threat to us. Remember, they
were just 2 days march from Harlingen, Texas. We actually declared a
national emergency in 1985 to protect the country from the threat of
Nicaragua. And it stayed in force. So it was much better for them to get
arms from the Russians. Why would they want jet planes? Well, for the
reasons I already mentioned. The United States had total control over
their airspace, was over flying it and using that to provide
instructions to the terrorist army to enable them to attack soft targets
without running into the army that might defend them. Everyone knew that
that was the reason. They are not going to use their jet planes for
anything else. But the idea that Nicaragua should be permitted to defend
its airspace against a superpower attack that is directing terrorist
forces to attack undefended civilian targets, that was considered in the
United States as outrageous and uniformly so. Exceptions are so slight,
you know I can practically list them. I don't suggest that you take my
word for this. Have a look. That includes our own senators,
incidentally.
Another illustration of how we regard terrorism is happening right
now. The US has just appointed an ambassador to the United Nations to
lead the war against terrorism a couple weeks ago. Who is he? Well, his
name is John Negroponte. He was the US ambassador in the fiefdom, which
is what it is, of Honduras in the early 1980's. There was a little fuss
made about the fact that he must have been aware, as he certainly was,
of the large-scale murders and other atrocities that were being carried
out by the security forces in Honduras that we were supporting. But
that's a small part of it. As proconsul of Honduras, as he was called
there, he was the local supervisor for the terrorist war based in
Honduras, for which his government was condemned by the world court and
then the Security Council in a vetoed resolution. And he was just
appointed as the UN Ambassador to lead the war against terror. Another
small experiment you can do is check and see what the reaction was to
this. Well, I will tell you what you are going to find, but find it for
yourself. Now that tells us a lot about the war against terrorism and a
lot about ourselves.
After the United States took over the country again under the conditions
that were so graphically described by the press, the country was pretty
much destroyed in the 1980's, but it has totally collapsed since in
every respect just about. Economically it has declined sharply since the
US take over, democratically and in every other respect. It's now the
second poorest country in the Hemisphere. I should say....I'm not going
to talk about it, but I mentioned that I picked up Nicaragua because it
is an uncontroversial case. If you look at the other states in the
region, the state terror was far more extreme and it again traces back
to Washington and that's by no means all.
It was happening elsewhere in the world too, take say Africa. During the
Reagan years alone, South African attacks, backed by the United States
and Britain, US/UK-backed South African attacks against the neighboring
countries killed about a million and a half people and left 60 billion
dollars in damage and countries destroyed. And if we go around the
world, we can add more examples.
Now that was the first war against terror of which I've given a small
sample. Are we supposed to pay attention to that? Or kind of think that
that might be relevant? After all it's not exactly ancient
history. Well, evidently not as you can tell by looking at the current
discussion of the war on terror which has been the leading topic for the
last month.
I mentioned that Nicaragua has now become the 2nd poorest country in the
hemisphere. What's the poorest country? Well that's of course Haiti
which also happens to be the victim of most US intervention in the 20th
century by a long shot. We left it totally devastated. It's the poorest
country. Nicaragua is second ranked in degree of US intervention in the
20th century. It is the 2nd poorest. Actually, it is vying with
Guatemala. They interchange every year or two as to who's the second
poorest. And they also vie as to who is the leading target of US
military intervention. We're supposed to think that all of this is some
sort of accident. That is has nothing to do with anything that happened
in history. Maybe.
The worst human rights violator in the 1990's is Colombia, by a long
shot. It's also the, by far, the leading recipient of US military aid
in the 1990's maintaining the terror and human rights violations. In
1999, Colombia replaced Turkey as the leading recipient of US arms
worldwide, that is excluding Israel and Egypt which are a separate
category. And that tells us a lot more about the war on terror right
now, in fact.
Why was Turkey getting such a huge flow of US arms? Well if you take a
look at the flow of US arms to Turkey, Turkey always got a lot of US
arms. It's strategically placed, a member of NATO, and so on. But the
arms flow to Turkey went up very sharply in 1984. It didn't have
anything to do with the cold war. I mean Russian was collapsing. And it
stayed high from 1984 to 1999 when it reduced and it was replaced in the
lead by Colombia. What happened from 1984 to 1999? Well, in 1984,
[Turkey] launched a major terrorist war against Kurds in southeastern
Turkey. And that's when US aid went up, military aid. And this was not
pistols. This was jet planes, tanks, military training, and so on. And
it stayed high as the atrocities escalated through the 1990's. Aid
followed it. The peak year was 1997. In 1997, US military aid to Turkey
was more than in the entire period 1950 to 1983, that is the cold war
period, which is an indication of how much the cold war has affected
policy. And the results were awesome. This led to 2-3 million
refugees. Some of the worst ethnic cleansing of the late 1990's. Tens of
thousands of people killed, 3500 towns and villages destroyed, way more
than Kosovo, even under NATO bombs. And the United States was providing
80% of the arms, increasing as the atrocities increased, peaking in
1997. It declined in 1999 because, once again, terror worked as it
usually does when carried out by its major agents, mainly the
powerful. So by 1999, Turkish terror, called of course counter-terror,
but as I said, that's universal, it worked. Therefore Turkey was
replaced by Colombia which had not yet succeeded in its terrorist
war. And therefore had to move into first place as recipient of US arms.
Well, what makes this all particularly striking is that all of this was
taking place right in the midst of a huge flood of self-congratulation
on the part of Western intellectuals which probably has no counterpart
in history. I mean you all remember it. It was just a couple years
ago. Massive self-adulation about how for the first time in history we
are so magnificent; that we are standing up for principles and values;
dedicated to ending inhumanity everywhere in the new era of
this-and-that, and so-on-and-so-forth. And we certainly can't tolerate
atrocities right near the borders of NATO. That was repeated over and
over. Only within the borders of NATO where we can not only can tolerate
much worse atrocities but contribute to them. Another insight into
Western civilization and our own, is how often was this brought up? Try
to look. I won't repeat it. But it's instructive. It's a pretty
impressive feat for a propaganda system to carry this off in a free
society. It's pretty amazing. I don't think you could do this in a
totalitarian state.
And Turkey is very grateful. Just a few days ago, Prime Minister Ecevit
announced that Turkey would join the coalition against terror, very
enthusiastically, even more so than others. In fact, he said they would
contribute troops which others have not willing to do. And he explained
why. He said, We owe a debt of gratitude to the United States because
the United States was the only country that was willing to contribute so
massively to our own, in his words "counter-terrorist" war, that is to
our own massive ethnic cleansing and atrocities and terror. Other
countries helped a little, but they stayed back. The United States, on
the other hand, contributed enthusiastically and decisively and was able
to do so because of the silence, servility might be the right word, of
the educated classes who could easily find out about it. It's a free
country after all. You can read human rights reports. You can read all
sorts of stuff. But we chose to contribute to the atrocities and Turkey
is very happy, they owe us a debt of gratitude for that and therefore
will contribute troops just as during the war in Serbia. Turkey was very
much praised for using its F-16's which we supplied it to bomb Serbia
exactly as it had been doing with the same planes against its own
population up until the time when it finally succeeded in crushing
internal terror as they called it. And as usual, as always, resistance
does include terror. Its true of the American Revolution. That's true of
every case I know. Just as its true that those who have a monopoly of
violence talk about themselves as carrying out counter terror.
Now that's pretty impressive and that has to do with the coalition that
is now being organized to fight the war against terror. And it's very
interesting to see how that coalition is being described. So have a look
at this morning's Christian Science Monitor. That's a good
newspaper. One of the best international newspapers, with real coverage
of the world. The lead story, the front-page story, is about how the
United States, you know people used to dislike the United States but now
they are beginning to respect it, and they are very happy about the way
that the US is leading the war against terror. And the prime example,
well in fact the only serious example, the others are a joke, is
Algeria. Turns out that Algeria is very enthusiastic about the US war
against terror. The person who wrote the article is an expert on
Africa. He must know that Algeria is one of the most vicious terrorist
states in the world and has been carrying out horrendous terror against
its own population in the past couple of years, in fact. For a while,
this was under wraps. But it was finally exposed in France by defectors
from the Algerian army. It's all over the place there and in England and
so on. But here, we're very proud because one of the worst terrorist
states in the world is now enthusiastically welcoming the US war on
terror and in fact is cheering on the United States to lead the
war. That shows how popular we are getting.
And if you look at the coalition that is being formed against terror it
tells you a lot more. A leading member of the coalition is Russia which
is delighted to have the United States support its murderous terrorist
war in Chechnya instead of occasionally criticizing it in the
background. China is joining enthusiastically. It's delighted to have
support for the atrocities it's carrying out in western China against,
what it called, Muslim secessionists. Turkey, as I mentioned, is very
happy with the war against terror. They are experts. Algeria, Indonesia
delighted to have even more US support for atrocities it is carrying out
in Ache and elsewhere. Now we can run through the list, the list of the
states that have joined the coalition against terror is quite
impressive. They have a characteristic in common. They are certainly
among the leading terrorist states in the world. And they happen to be
led by the world champion.
Well that brings us back to the question, what is terrorism? I have been
assuming we understand it. Well, what is it? Well, there happen to be
some easy answers to this. There is an official definition. You can find
it in the US code or in US army manuals. A brief statement of it taken
from a US army manual, is fair enough, is that terror is the calculated
use of violence or the threat of violence to attain political or
religious ideological goals through intimidation, coercion, or
instilling fear. That's terrorism. That's a fair enough definition. I
think it is reasonable to accept that. The problem is that it can't be
accepted because if you accept that, all the wrong consequences
follow. For example, all the consequences I have just been
reviewing. Now there is a major effort right now at the UN to try to
develop a comprehensive treaty on terrorism. When Kofi Annan got the
Nobel prize the other day, you will notice he was reported as saying
that we should stop wasting time on this and really get down to it.
But there's a problem. If you use the official definition of terrorism
in the comprehensive treaty you are going to get completely the wrong
results. So that can't be done. In fact, it is even worse than that. If
you take a look at the definition of Low Intensity Warfare which is
official US policy you find that it is a very close paraphrase of what I
just read. In fact, Low Intensity Conflict is just another name for
terrorism. That's why all countries, as far as I know, call whatever
horrendous acts they are carrying out, counter terrorism. We happen to
call it Counter Insurgency or Low Intensity Conflict. So that's a
serious problem. You can't use the actual definitions. You've got to
carefully find a definition that doesn't have all the wrong
consequences.
There are some other problems. Some of them came up in December 1987, at
the peak of the first war on terrorism, that's when the furor over the
plague was peaking. The United Nations General Assembly passed a very
strong resolution against terrorism, condemning the plague in the
strongest terms, calling on every state to fight against it in every
possible way. It passed unanimously. One country, Honduras
abstained. Two votes against; the usual two, United States and
Israel. Why should the United States and Israel vote against a major
resolution condemning terrorism in the strongest terms, in fact pretty
much the terms that the Reagan administration was using? Well, there is
a reason. There is one paragraph in that long resolution which says that
nothing in this resolution infringes on the rights of people struggling
against racist and colonialist regimes or foreign military occupation to
continue with their resistance with the assistance of others, other
states, states outside in their just cause. Well, the United States and
Israel can't accept that. The main reason that they couldn't at the time
was because of South Africa. South Africa was an ally, officially called
an ally. There was a terrorist force in South Africa. It was called the
African National Congress. They were a terrorist force officially. South
Africa in contrast was an ally and we certainly couldn't support actions
by a terrorist group struggling against a racist regime. That would be
impossible.
And of course there is another one. Namely the Israeli occupied
territories, now going into its 35th year. Supported primarily by the
United States in blocking a diplomatic settlement for 30 years now,
still is. And you can't have that. There is another one at the
time. Israel was occupying Southern Lebanon and was being combated by
what the US calls a terrorist force, Hizbullah, which in fact succeeded
in driving Israel out of Lebanon. And we can't allow anyone to struggle
against a military occupation when it is one that we support so
therefore the US and Israel had to vote against the major UN resolution
on terrorism. And I mentioned before that a US vote against...is
essentially a veto. Which is only half the story. It also vetoes it from
history. So none of this was every reported and none of it appeared in
the annals of terrorism. If you look at the scholarly work on terrorism
and so on, nothing that I just mentioned appears. The reason is that it
has got the wrong people holding the guns. You have to carefully hone
the definitions and the scholarship and so on so that you come out with
the right conclusions; otherwise it is not respectable scholarship and
honorable journalism. Well, these are some of problems that are
hampering the effort to develop a comprehensive treaty against
terrorism. Maybe we should have an academic conference or something to
try to see if we can figure out a way of defining terrorism so that it
comes out with just the right answers, not the wrong answers. That won't
be easy.
Well, let's drop that and turn to the 4th question, What are the origins
of the September 11 crimes? Here we have to make a distinction between 2
categories which shouldn't be run together. One is the actual agents of
the crime, the other is kind of a reservoir of at least sympathy,
sometimes support that they appeal to even among people who very much
oppose the criminals and the actions. And those are 2 different things.
Well, with regard to the perpetrators, in a certain sense we are not
really clear. The United States either is unable or unwilling to provide
any evidence, any meaningful evidence. There was a sort of a play a week
or two ago when Tony Blair was set up to try to present it. I don't
exactly know what the purpose of this was. Maybe so that the US could
look as though it's holding back on some secret evidence that it can't
reveal or that Tony Blair could strike proper Churchillian poses or
something or other. Whatever the PR [public relations] reasons were, he
gave a presentation which was in serious circles considered so absurd
that it was barely even mentioned. So the Wall Street Journal, for
example, one of the more serious papers had a small story on page 12, I
think, in which they pointed out that there was not much evidence and
then they quoted some high US official as saying that it didn't matter
whether there was any evidence because they were going to do it
anyway. So why bother with the evidence? The more ideological press,
like the New York Times and others, they had big front-page
headlines. But the Wall Street Journal reaction was reasonable and if
you look at the so-called evidence you can see why. But let's assume
that it's true. It is astonishing to me how weak the evidence was. I
sort of thought you could do better than that without any intelligence
service [audience laughter]. In fact, remember this was after weeks of
the most intensive investigation in history of all the intelligence
services of the western world working overtime trying to put something
together. And it was a prima facie, it was a very strong case even
before you had anything. And it ended up about where it started, with a
prima facie case. So let's assume that it is true. So let's assume that,
it looked obvious the first day, still does, that the actual
perpetrators come from the radical Islamic, here called, fundamentalist
networks of which the bin Laden network is undoubtedly a significant
part. Whether they were involved or not nobody knows. It doesn't really
matter much.
That's the background, those networks. Well, where do they come from? We
know all about that. Nobody knows about that better than the CIA because
it helped organize them and it nurtured them for a long time. They were
brought together in the 1980's actually by the CIA and its associates
elsewhere: Pakistan, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China was
involved, they may have been involved a little bit earlier, maybe by
1978. The idea was to try to harass the Russians, the common
enemy. According to President Carter's National Security Advisor,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, the US got involved in mid 1979. Do you remember,
just to put the dates right, that Russia invaded Afghanistan in December
1979. Ok. According to Brzezinski, the US support for the mojahedin
fighting against the government began 6 months earlier. He is very proud
of that. He says we drew the Russians into, in his words, an Afghan
trap, by supporting the mojahedin, getting them to invade, getting them
into the trap. Now then we could develop this terrific mercenary army.
Not a small one, maybe 100,000 men or so bringing together the best
killers they could find, who were radical Islamist fanatics from around
North Africa, Saudi Arabia....anywhere they could find them. They were
often called the Afghanis but many of them, like bin Laden, were not
Afghans. They were brought by the CIA and its friends from
elsewhere. Whether Brzezinski is telling the truth or not, I don't
know. He may have been bragging, he is apparently very proud of it,
knowing the consequences incidentally. But maybe it's true. We'll know
someday if the documents are ever released. Anyway, that's his
perception. By January 1980 it is not even in doubt that the US was
organizing the Afghanis and this massive military force to try to cause
the Russians maximal trouble. It was a legitimate thing for the Afghans
to fight the Russian invasion. But the US intervention was not helping
the Afghans. In fact, it helped destroy the country and much more. The
Afghanis, so called, had their own...it did force the Russians to
withdrew, finally. Although many analysts believe that it probably
delayed their withdrawal because they were trying to get out of
it. Anyway, whatever, they did withdraw.
Meanwhile, the terrorist forces that the CIA was organizing, arming, and
training were pursuing their own agenda, right away. It was no
secret. One of the first acts was in 1981 when they assassinated the
President of Egypt, who was one of the most enthusiastic of their
creators. In 1983, one suicide bomber, who may or may not have been
connected, it's pretty shadowy, nobody knows. But one suicide bomber
drove the US army-military out of Lebanon. And it continued. They have
their own agenda. The US was happy to mobilize them to fight its cause
but meanwhile they are doing their own thing. They were clear very about
it. After 1989, when the Russians had withdrawn, they simply turned
elsewhere. Since then they have been fighting in Chechnya, Western
China, Bosnia, Kashmir, South East Asia, North Africa, all over the
place.
They are telling us just what they think. The United States wants to
silence the one free television channel in the Arab world because it's
broadcasting a whole range of things from Powell over to Osama bin
Laden. So the US is now joining the repressive regimes of the Arab world
that try to shut it up. But if you listen to it, if you listen to what
bin Laden says, it's worth it. There is plenty of interviews. And there
are plenty of interviews by leading Western reporters, if you don't want
to listen to his own voice, Robert Fisk and others. And what he has been
saying is pretty consistent for a long time. He's not the only one but
maybe he is the most eloquent. It's not only consistent over a long
time, it is consistent with their actions. So there is every reason to
take it seriously. Their prime enemy is what they call the corrupt and
oppressive authoritarian brutal regimes of the Arab world and when the
say that they get quite a resonance in the region. They also want to
defend and they want to replace them by properly Islamist
governments. That's where they lose the people of the region. But up
till then, they are with them. From their point of view, even Saudi
Arabia, the most extreme fundamentalist state in the world, I suppose,
short of the Taliban, which is an offshoot, even that's not Islamist
enough for them. Ok, at that point, they get very little support, but up
until that point they get plenty of support. Also they want to defend
Muslims elsewhere. They hate the Russians like poison, but as soon as
the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan, they stopped carrying out
terrorist acts in Russia as they had been doing with CIA backing before
that within Russia, not just in Afghanistan. They did move over to
Chechnya. But there they are defending Muslims against a Russian
invasion. Same with all the other places I mentioned. From their point
of view, they are defending the Muslims against the infidels. And they
are very clear about it and that is what they have been doing.
Now why did they turn against the United States? Well that had to do
with what they call the US invasion of Saudi Arabia. In 1990, the US
established permanent military bases in Saudi Arabia which from their
point of view is comparable to a Russian invasion of Afghanistan except
that Saudi Arabia is way more important. That's the home of the holiest
sites of Islam. And that is when their activities turned against the
Unites States. If you recall, in 1993 they tried to blow up the World
Trade Center. Got part of the way, but not the whole way and that was
only part of it. The plans were to blow up the UN building, the Holland
and Lincoln tunnels, the FBI building. I think there were others on the
list. Well, they sort of got part way, but not all the way. One person
who is jailed for that, finally, among the people who were jailed, was a
Egyptian cleric who had been brought into the United States over the
objections of the Immigration Service, thanks to the intervention of the
CIA which wanted to help out their friend. A couple years later he was
blowing up the World Trade Center. And this has been going on all
over. I'm not going to run through the list but it's, if you want to
understand it, it's consistent. It's a consistent picture. It's
described in words. It's revealed in practice for 20 years. There is no
reason not to take it seriously. That's the first category, the likely
perpetrators.
What about the reservoir of support? Well, it's not hard to find out
what that is. One of the good things that has happened since September
11 is that some of the press and some of the discussion has begun to
open up to some of these things. The best one to my knowledge is the
Wall Street Journal which right away began to run, within a couple of
days, serious reports, searching serious reports, on the reasons why the
people of the region, even though they hate bin Laden and despise
everything he is doing, nevertheless support him in many ways and even
regard him as the conscience of Islam, as one said. Now the Wall Street
Journal and others, they are not surveying public opinion. They are
surveying the opinion of their friends: bankers, professionals,
international lawyers, businessmen tied to the United States, people who
they interview in MacDonalds restaurant, which is an elegant restaurant
there, wearing fancy American clothes. That's the people they are
interviewing because they want to find out what their attitudes are. And
their attitudes are very explicit and very clear and in many ways
consonant with the message of bin Laden and others. They are very angry
at the United States because of its support of authoritarian and brutal
regimes; its intervention to block any move towards democracy; its
intervention to stop economic development; its policies of devastating
the civilian societies of Iraq while strengthening Saddam Hussein; and
they remember, even if we prefer not to, that the United States and
Britain supported Saddam Hussein right through his worst atrocities,
including the gassing of the Kurds, bin Laden brings that up constantly,
and they know it even if we don't want to. And of course their support
for the Israeli military occupation which is harsh and brutal. It is now
in its 35th year. The US has been providing the overwhelming economic,
military, and diplomatic support for it, and still does. And they know
that and they don't like it. Especially when that is paired with US
policy towards Iraq, towards the Iraqi civilian society which is getting
destroyed. Ok, those are the reasons roughly. And when bin Laden gives
those reasons, people recognize it and support it.
Now that's not the way people here like to think about it, at least
educated liberal opinion. They like the following line which has been
all over the press, mostly from left liberals, incidentally. I have not
done a real study but I think right wing opinion has generally been more
honest. But if you look at say at the New York Times at the first op-ed
they ran by Ronald Steel, serious left liberal intellectual. He asks Why
do they hate us? This is the same day, I think, that the Wall Street
Journal was running the survey on why they hate us. So he says "They
hate us because we champion a new world order of capitalism,
individualism, secularism, and democracy that should be the norm
everywhere." That's why they hate us. The same day the Wall Street
Journal is surveying the opinions of bankers, professionals,
international lawyers and saying `look, we hate you because you are
blocking democracy, you are preventing economic development, you are
supporting brutal regimes, terrorist regimes and you are doing these
horrible things in the region.' A couple days later, Anthony Lewis, way
out on the left, explained that the terrorist seek only "apocalyptic
nihilism," nothing more and nothing we do matters. The only consequence
of our actions, he says, that could be harmful is that it makes it
harder for Arabs to join in the coalition's anti-terrorism effort. But
beyond that, everything we do is irrelevant.
Well, you know, that's got the advantage of being sort of comforting. It
makes you feel good about yourself, and how wonderful you are. It
enables us to evade the consequences of our actions. It has a couple of
defects. One is it is at total variance with everything we know. And
another defect is that it is a perfect way to ensure that you escalate
the cycle of violence. If you want to live with your head buried in the
sand and pretend they hate us because they're opposed to globalization,
that's why they killed Sadat 20 years ago, and fought the Russians,
tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993. And these are all
people who are in the midst of ... corporate globalization but if you
want to believe that, yeh...comforting. And it is a great way to make
sure that violence escalates. That's tribal violence. You did something
to me, I'll do something worse to you. I don't care what the reasons
are. We just keep going that way. And that's a way to do it. Pretty much
straight, left-liberal opinion.
What are the policy options? Well, there are a number. A narrow policy
option from the beginning was to follow the advice of really far out
radicals like the Pope [audience laughter]. The Vatican immediately said
look it's a horrible terrorist crime. In the case of crime, you try to
find the perpetrators, you bring them to justice, you try them. You
don't kill innocent civilians. Like if somebody robs my house and I
think the guy who did it is probably in the neighborhood across the
street, I don't go out with an assault rifle and kill everyone in that
neighborhood. That's not the way you deal with crime, whether it's a
small crime like this one or really massive one like the US terrorist
war against Nicaragua, even worse ones and others in between. And there
are plenty of precedents for that. In fact, I mentioned a precedent,
Nicaragua, a lawful, a law abiding state, that's why presumably we had
to destroy it, which followed the right principles. Now of course, it
didn't get anywhere because it was running up against a power that
wouldn't allow lawful procedures to be followed. But if the United
States tried to pursue them, nobody would stop them. In fact, everyone
would applaud. And there are plenty of other precedents.
When the IRA set off bombs in London, which is pretty serious business,
Britain could have, apart from the fact that it was unfeasible, let's
put that aside, one possible response would have been to destroy Boston
which is the source of most of the financing. And of course to wipe out
West Belfast. Well, you know, quite apart from the feasibility, it
would have been criminal idiocy. The way to deal with it was pretty much
what they did. You know, find the perpetrators; bring them to trial; and
look for the reasons. Because these things don't come out of
nowhere. They come from something. Whether it is a crime in the streets
or a monstrous terrorist crime or anything else. There's reasons. And
usually if you look at the reasons, some of them are legitimate and
ought to be addressed, independently of the crime, they ought to be
addressed because they are legitimate. And that's the way to deal with
it. There are many such examples.
But there are problems with that. One problem is that the United States
does not recognize the jurisdiction of international institutions. So it
can't go to them. It has rejected the jurisdiction of the World
Court. It has refused to ratify the International Criminal Court. It is
powerful enough to set up a new court if it wants so that wouldn't stop
anything. But there is a problem with any kind of a court, mainly you
need evidence. You go to any kind of court, you need some kind of
evidence. Not Tony Blair talking about it on television. And that's very
hard. It may be impossible to find.
You know, it could be that the people who did it, killed
themselves. Nobody knows this better than the CIA. These are
decentralized, nonhierarchic networks. They follow a principle that is
called Leaderless Resistance. That's the principle that has been
developed by the Christian Right terrorists in the United States. It's
called Leaderless Resistance. You have small groups that do things. They
don't talk to anybody else. There is a kind of general background of
assumptions and then you do it. Actually people in the anti war movement
are very familiar with it. We used to call it affinity groups. If you
assume correctly that whatever group you are in is being penetrated by
the FBI, when something serious is happening, you don't do it in a
meeting. You do it with some people you know and trust, an affinity
group and then it doesn't get penetrated. That's one of the reasons why
the FBI has never been able to figure out what's going on in any of the
popular movements. And other intelligence agencies are the same. They
can't. That's leaderless resistance or affinity groups, and
decentralized networks are extremely hard to penetrate. And it's quite
possible that they just don't know. When Osama bin Laden claims he
wasn't involved, that's entirely possible. In fact, it's pretty hard to
imagine how a guy in a cave in Afghanistan, who doesn't even have a
radio or a telephone could have planned a highly sophisticated operation
like that. Chances are it's part of the background. You know, like other
leaderless resistance terrorist groups. Which means it's going to be
extremely difficult to find evidence.
And the US doesn't want to present evidence because it wants to be able
to do it, to act without evidence. That's a crucial part of the
reaction. You will notice that the US did not ask for Security Council
authorization which they probably could have gotten this time, not for
pretty reasons, but because the other permanent members of the Security
Council are also terrorist states. They are happy to join a coalition
against what they call terror, namely in support of their own
terror. Like Russia wasn't going to veto, they love it. So the US
probably could have gotten Security Council authorization but it didn't
want it. And it didn't want it because it follows a long-standing
principle which is not George Bush, it was explicit in the Clinton
administration, articulated and goes back much further and that is that
we have the right to act unilaterally. We don't want international
authorization because we act unilaterally and therefore we don't want
it. We don't care about evidence. We don't care about negotiation. We
don't care about treaties. We are the strongest guy around; the toughest
thug on the block. We do what we want. Authorization is a bad thing and
therefore must be avoided. There is even a name for it in the technical
literature. It's called establishing credibility. You have to establish
credibility. That's an important factor in many policies. It was the
official reason given for the war in the Balkans and the most plausible
reason.
You want to know what credibility means, ask your favorite Mafia
Don. He'll explain to you what credibility means. And it's the same in
international affairs, except it's talked about in universities using
big words, and that sort of thing. But it's basically the same
principle. And it makes sense. And it usually works. The main historian
who has written about this in the last couple years is Charles Tilly
with a book called Coercion, Capital, and European States. He points out
that violence has been the leading principle of Europe for hundreds of
years and the reason is because it works. You know, it's very
reasonable. It almost always works. When you have an overwhelming
predominance of violence and a culture of violence behind it. So
therefore it makes sense to follow it. Well, those are all problems in
pursuing lawful paths. And if you did try to follow them you'd really
open some very dangerous doors. Like the US is demanding that the
Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden. And they are responding in a way
which is regarded as totally absurd and outlandish in the west, namely
they are saying, Ok, but first give us some evidence. In the west, that
is considered ludicrous. It's a sign of their criminality. How can they
ask for evidence? I mean if somebody asked us to hand someone over, we'd
do it tomorrow. We wouldn't ask for any evidence. [crowd laughter].
In fact it is easy to prove that. We don't have to make up cases. So for
example, for the last several years, Haiti has been requesting the
United States to extradite Emmanuel Constant. He is a major killer. He
is one of the leading figures in the slaughter of maybe 4000 or 5000
people in the years in the mid 1990's, under the military junta, which
incidentally was being, not so tacitly, supported by the Bush and the
Clinton administrations contrary to illusions. Anyway he is a leading
killer. They have plenty of evidence. No problem about evidence. He has
already been brought to trial and sentenced in Haiti and they are asking
the United States to turn him over. Well, I mean do your own
research. See how much discussion there has been of that. Actually Haiti
renewed the request a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't even mentioned. Why
should we turn over a convicted killer who was largely responsible for
killing 4000 or 5000 people a couple of years ago. In fact, if we do
turn him over, who knows what he would say. Maybe he'll say that he was
being funded and helped by the CIA, which is probably true. We don't
want to open that door. And he is not he only one.
I mean, for the last about 15 years, Costa Rica which is the democratic
prize, has been trying to get the United States to hand over a John
Hull, a US land owner in Costa Rica, who they charge with terrorist
crimes. He was using his land, they claim with good evidence as a base
for the US war against Nicaragua, which is not a controversial
conclusion, remember. There is the World Court and Security Council
behind it. So they have been trying to get the United States to hand him
over. Hear about that one ? No.
They did actually confiscate the land of another American landholder,
John Hamilton. Paid compensation, offered compensation. The US
refused. Turned his land over into a national park because his land was
also being used as a base for the US attack against Nicaragua. Costa
Rica was punished for that one. They were punished by withholding
aid. We don't accept that kind of insubordination from allies. And we
can go on. If you open the door to questions about extradition it leads
in very unpleasant directions. So that can't be done.
Well, what about the reactions in Afghanistan. The initial proposal, the
initial rhetoric was for a massive assault which would kill many people
visibly and also an attack on other countries in the region. Well the
Bush administration wisely backed off from that. They were being told by
every foreign leader, NATO, everyone else, every specialist, I suppose,
their own intelligence agencies that that would be the stupidest thing
they could possibly do. It would simply be like opening recruiting
offices for bin Laden all over the region. That's exactly what he
wants. And it would be extremely harmful to their own interests. So they
backed off that one. And they are turning to what I described earlier
which is a kind of silent genocide. It's a.... well, I already said what
I think about it. I don't think anything more has to be said. You can
figure it out if you do the arithmetic.
A sensible proposal which is kind of on the verge of being considered,
but it has been sensible all along, and it is being raised, called for
by expatriate Afghans and allegedly tribal leaders internally, is for a
UN initiative, which would keep the Russians and Americans out of it,
totally. These are the 2 countries that have practically wiped the
country out in the last 20 years. They should be out of it. They should
provide massive reparations. But that's their only role. A UN initiative
to bring together elements within Afghanistan that would try to
construct something from the wreckage. It's conceivable that that could
work, with plenty of support and no interference. If the US insists on
running it, we might as well quit. We have a historical record on that
one.
You will notice that the name of this operation....remember that at
first it was going to be a Crusade but they backed off that because PR
(public relations) agents told them that that wouldn't work [audience
laughter]. And then it was going to be Infinite Justice, but the PR
agents said, wait a minute, you are sounding like you are divinity. So
that wouldn't work. And then it was changed to enduring freedom. We know
what that means. But nobody has yet pointed out, fortunately, that there
is an ambiguity there. To endure means to suffer. [audience
laughter]. And a there are plenty of people around the world who have
endured what we call freedom. Again, fortunately we have a very
well-behaved educated class so nobody has yet pointed out this
ambiguity. But if its done there will be another problem to deal
with. But if we can back off enough so that some more or less
independent agency, maybe the UN, maybe credible NGO's (non governmental
organizations) can take the lead in trying to reconstruct something from
the wreckage, with plenty of assistance and we owe it to them. Them
maybe something would come out. Beyond that, there are other problems.
We certainly want to reduce the level of terror, certainly not escalate
it. There is one easy way to do that and therefore it is never
discussed. Namely stop participating in it. That would automatically
reduce the level of terror enormously. But that you can't discuss. Well
we ought to make it possible to discuss it. So that's one easy way to
reduce the level of terror.
Beyond that, we should rethink the kinds of policies, and Afghanistan is
not the only one, in which we organize and train terrorist armies. That
has effects. We're seeing some of these effects now. September 11th is
one. Rethink it.
Rethink the policies that are creating a reservoir of support. Exactly
what the bankers, lawyers and so on are saying in places like Saudi
Arabia. On the streets it's much more bitter, as you can imagine. That's
possible. You know, those policies aren't graven in stone.
And further more there are opportunities. It's hard to find many rays of
light in the last couple of weeks but one of them is that there is an
increased openness. Lots of issues are open for discussion, even in
elite circles, certainly among the general public, that were not a
couple of weeks ago. That's dramatically the case. I mean, if a
newspaper like USA Today can run a very good article, a serious article,
on life in the Gaza Strip...there has been a change. The things I
mentioned in the Wall Street Journal...that's change. And among the
general public, I think there is much more openness and willingness to
think about things that were under the rug and so on. These are
opportunities and they should be used, at least by people who accept the
goal of trying to reduce the level of violence and terror, including
potential threats that are extremely severe and could make even
September 11th pale into insignificance. Thanks.
--
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